If you don’t want to burn an Italian-shaped hole in your new trouser pocket, then there are other good options off-the-peg. If you prefer a more casual silhouette then Neapolitan tailors are where it’s at with the likes of Rubinacci, Cesare Attolini, De Petrillo and Dalcuore all able to serve up perfectly proportioned slices of pinstriped sprezzatura. Sexton’s chalk stripe DBs are simply stunning and his cutting skills are second to none. Savile Row is the obvious port of call but we’d recommend scooting down to Knightsbridge and dropping into Edward Sexton, especially if you prefer to opt for a double-breasted suit jacket. You’ll find no end of tailors able to source amazing pinstripe cloth, so if your budget permits then go the bespoke or made-to-measure route. Well, recent shows have been full of pinstripes, with Prada, Dolce & Gabbana and Louis Vuitton all experimenting with new takes on three-piece pinstripe suiting. The pinstripe suit has actually been on a tear in womenswear in recent years as the trend for bold boxy tailoring has gripped runways, but what of the men? That’s the thing with classic motifs – they never really go out of style, but instead form a constant source for reinterpretation and reinvention. And if the history of the pinstripe suit is, somewhat ironically, quite chequered, what of the modern day iterations? Alive and very much kicking. More contemporary iterations of the pinstripe suit see the likes of Gordon Gecko and Patrick Bateman lionising it, each deploying merciless tactics dressed in the power lines. Messrs Roosevelt and Churchill both favoured the pinstripe, with the latter famously pictured wearing a pinstripe jumpsuit while toting a Tommy gun. Mainstream adoption came in the late 30s and early 40s with the likes of Clark Gable and Cary Grant, the former of whom famously wore a pinstripe suit in Gone With The Wind, before the political class sought the strength of the stripe during the Second World War. Patrick Bateman was a fan of the pinstripe suit in American Psycho (2000) Furthermore, they also saw themselves as legitimate businessmen with sartorial nous, well-dressed pillars of a lawless and dangerous society, powerful men to be respected, all of which seem to be the innate deceits of gangsters throughout time. Quite why the criminal kingpins of the time adopted pinstripes suits is thought to be because the vertical stripes made them look thinner, given many of them had literally fattened up on ill-gained profits. The turn of the suit came a decade later in the Prohibition 1920s, when American culture became enamoured by the striped motif, with the pinstripe suit getting top billing in the wardrobes of the power- and infamy-hungry bootleggers such as Al Capone, along with film stars du jour and jazz impresarios. When the trend eventually sailed across the Atlantic, it was not in tailoring form that pinstripes first landed but in that of baseball uniform, with the Giants, the Cubs and the New York Yankees all adopting the style. The pinstripe motif originally gathered pace in America in the form of baseball jerseys
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